


The Year Without Abuse

by fatal_drum



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Attempted Sexual Assault, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Childhood Abuse, F/F, LGBTQ, Memoir, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 11:28:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6152203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatal_drum/pseuds/fatal_drum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once she took me to a prom-themed drag show and brought me home to her apartment, where she'd left orange rose petals in a trail to the bed. I never went to prom, but she gave me the next best thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Year Without Abuse

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure why I'm posting this. It's not something I'm proud of, but it is something I had to write. 
> 
> Maybe if I'd heard more stories like this, things would be different. I don't know. 
> 
> Please watch for triggers, which include but are not limited to abuse of various kinds, attempted sexual assault, BDSM done wrong, slut shaming, and victim blaming.
> 
> Please note that the attitudes depicted here are not healthy, and I know they aren't. Survivors should not have to explain themselves to others, and they don't owe anything to their abusers.

I've wanted to write this for a long time. 

I've wanted to write about how we met, about the fall of short blonde hair that swept over her eyes, and how blue her eyes really were. How she bought me flowers and introduced me to her friends on our second date - _our second date!_ \- and I was staggered to think how much she must like me.

I've wanted to write how it was her mind that drew me in. She was working on two masters degrees, theology and biomedical science, and I found this contrast helplessly appealing.

Once she took me to a prom-themed drag show and brought me home to her apartment, where she'd left orange rose petals in a trail to the bed. I never went to prom, but she gave me the next best thing. 

She used to tease me about being awkward, how I made a mess of social situations. _It's painful to watch,_ she would say, kissing my hair. She said it sweetly, but I took it to heart.

I really should have seen it coming.

I really, really should have.

We didn't have a lot in common besides science. I was almost finished with my doctorate, and she had tried and failed to enter the same program.

She had only slept with one other person before, a woman she'd loved. My encounters had never been about love, just fun and mutual respect. Sex had been a hobby for me, a way to get out of my head, to push my body's limits. Most of my partners were female, a couple were male, and a few were one night stands. Sometimes I took them in pairs. Mostly I was careful, and the one time I did something stupid, I learned from it. I got tested regularly.

She made fun of me for kissing her at the end of our second date - too soon, she said - but she pursued me aggressively afterward, bringing me to her bed much faster than I'd expected. It was only later that she asked about my history.

I'll never forget the disgust in her voice when she said I should have warned her, like I was something dirty that wasn't safe to touch. Like I was tainted irrevocably, unsafe and undesirable.

Never mind that she never asked. Never mind that it was her hands on me first, unasked for but not unwanted. Never mind that I'd been tested and retested. I was still dirty.

We made up. She was always coming by with gifts, or calling to make sure I was okay or to tell me she loved me. If she called me a slut after that, she was mostly kidding, I thought.

I've never had a lot of friends, but she hated most of them, especially Josh. Josh was in his thirties, boyishly handsome and protective of me. We'd slept together once, drunkenly, and came out with a stronger friendship and no intention to repeat the experience. She wasn't a fan of Nick, either, my sweet and awkward friend who had shamelessly propositioned me a few times but was very polite about it. It didn't matter that they both had girlfriends by then, or that I never saw them alone.

Being pathologically honest about these things, I insisted, _If I want to sleep with someone, I'll tell you. But I don't._ I've never been interested in cheating, but she didn't believe me.

She had a way of making me feel so wanted. Once she went on a week-long trip to New Orleans, and we talked long into the small hours of the night, every night, like she couldn't live without my voice.

Eventually I told her about my upbringing. About my father, who drank constantly, who belittled and screamed at and occasionally hit me, who did something so terrible I still have nightmares.

 _You're safe now,_ she would whisper into my hair.

She figured out pretty quickly that I liked rough sex, that she could pin me against a wall and make me squirm and beg. I explained my rules and my boundaries - no choking, no lasting marks, that sort of thing. I explained what my kinks did and didn't mean; submission in bed is not submission in life. This was new to her, but she took to it quickly and with an enthusiasm that thrilled me. 

Biting was her favorite. Sometimes she did it too hard, and I'd ask her plainly to stop. She didn't always stop, but I didn't safeword out. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. In retrospect, I should have.

Sometimes I wonder how this story would have ended, had I been a girl with normal tastes. If she would have felt the same entitlement to me and to my body.

We fought often. Sometimes she'd push and push the argument until I screamed at her to leave me alone, hurled insults until she'd back off. I wasn't proud of that. Most of our fights ended with us going to bed angry and me trying to stifle the sound of my sobs. My tears seemed like the only thing that could calm her into forgiveness.

Once during an argument, she tried to pin me to the bed, to pry my legs apart. Horrified, I told her no, trying to get her off of me, to keep my legs together, begging her to stop. Finally I got her off of me and bolted. I spent hours trying not to panic over what had almost happened, trying to reconcile her actions with the image of rose petals on her bed. 

When we finally talked about it, she brushed it off and told me I should have used my safe word. I was baffled - why should I need a safe word for real life? - but I brushed it off as a mistake. Somehow she was never alarmed by what she'd almost done.

Our lives went on. She spoiled me with presents and declarations of love and all the soft touches and long kisses I could want. We fought and I cried and we made up.

This is how it ended, eventually:

It was early, and she wanted to go to sleep. I teased her and tried to keep her attention. She snapped an unusually sharp insult at me - _stupid cunt!_ \- and I told her I'd take my stuff to the living room and leave her alone.

I'd been sketching exercises out of a book, and I had a novel I wanted to read and a bottle of water I was sipping, so it took more than one trip. One the second trip, she snapped, _Don't you_ dare _come back in here._

I'm just getting my stuff, I said, and parroted back her insult under my breath, laughing.

Suddenly she had me against the wall with her hands on my throat. I hadn't been expecting it, and it didn't feel playful or sexy or like anything but a threat. It was also an established hard limit.

 _Red,_ I remembered to gasp.

Thankfully, she let go, and I could breathe again. I bent over, grateful, until I did something I'll never understand: I laughed. It wasn't funny, but I laughed anyway.

Seconds later her hands were on my throat again, and she had me gasping _red_ again before she threw me to the side.

After she shut me out, I checked for bruises, but my skin was clean. It was the first time she'd raised a hand against me. Later, I realized she never needed to.

That morning she kissed me goodbye before leaving for work, and I packed. I'd made a frantic call to a family member, and she'd agreed to keep me and my cats without hesitation - I wasn't going anywhere without the cats. What if she hurt them? I'd rather be scared with them than terrified without them. I packed with my heart screaming in my chest, constantly looking over my shoulder in case she came home early.

On my way north, I made a call to Calvin, a smart young twink who was one of our best friends. I explained what had happened, why I had to leave, but begged him to take care of her.

 _If you guys weren't playing, why did you need a safeword?_ he asked.

I stumbled over an explanation, the panic, the time she almost hadn't stopped.

_I understand your leaving, but I don't approve of the way you're doing it._

He thought I owed it to her to say goodbye in person.

I haven't spoken to Calvin or his partner since then. We used to see each other every week. 

They haven't asked how I'm doing, and I haven't told them.

I several weeks up north, reading constantly, playing with my aunt's dogs, drinking beer and playing video games with her husband and their roommate. My depression was still in force, but I was safe.

I didn't answer her calls for several days, but I listened to every voicemail. When she left a message about our dogs running away, I finally called back. I realized that more than anything, I just wanted her to apologize, to say she was wrong, that I didn't deserve to be choked. I wanted her to love me enough to say that. 

Instead she had excuses. 

But I was lonely enough to take them, for a while. 

I went back, for a while. 

When I left for the last time, I said goodbye in person, even with my heart racing in my chest. I remembered her hands prying at my thighs, clutching at my throat, but Calvin's rebuke gnawed at me. 

I kissed her lips and took my bags to the car, already packed.

It's been a year, and I know I'm free. No one's there to question me when I go out, or tell me how awkward and embarrassing I am, or scream at me for making my own decisions.

Sometimes I miss having a warm body next to me at night. Sometimes I miss her jokes, miss the way she learned to cook tofu just for me, even as she made fun of it. Sometimes I wonder if every relationship would be like that, if every sweet-tongued lover will just be her without the deep blue eyes and the clever smile.

A few months ago, I let an ex-soldier pick me up at a bar in another city. She was considerate but rough in all the right ways, and afterwards we held each other as she talked about the war. She wasn't especially clever or sweet, but I liked her enough, and she probably liked me.

Sometimes I can't believe I let this happen. I slid from a fucked-up childhood into a fucked-up engagement. She wanted marriage and kids, and I was all for it, even with all our fighting. I thought it would go away eventually. I'd figure out how to do it right.

Sometimes I wonder if we'd still be together if it weren't for that one time. I wonder if I'd become my mother, watching helplessly as my partner turned our children into me. Would I have left the first time she hit them? The second time?

Ever?

As Jacqueline Carey wrote, _No one is given to know what might have been._

I get lonely a lot. I work long hours and come home to my happy dog and my fluffy cats, read, and drink a glass of dry red wine before bed. I'm looking for a better job and maybe a new city.

Sometimes I'm floored when I remember, suddenly, I'm free.


End file.
